Tajik National Army

The Tajik National Army is the ground force of Tajikistan, created in February 1993, shortly after the start of the Tajik Civil War. The army is small, with only 2.17% of the GDP ($162,720,000) going to the armed forces.

History
The Tajik National Army was formed in February 1993; unlike many other post-Soviet Union countries, Tajikistan did not inherit Soviet units in the country. Instead, Russia took over all of the Soviet troops stationed there and repatriated them. The Tajik Army used Soviet-made weapons, such as T-62 and T-72 tanks, BTR-80 APCs, BMP-2 IFVs, AK-74u and AK-47 assault rifles, Makarov and TT-33 pistols, RPK and PKM light machine-guns, DShK heavy machine guns, Dragunov sniper rifles, and RPG-7 launchers. By 1993, the Tajik National Army had only around 3,000 troops, relying on the 25,000 Russian Army troops sent by President Boris Yeltsin for security.

In late 1992, the Tajik Civil War broke out between the United Tajik Opposition Islamists and democrats and the government of Tajikistan under Emomali Rahmon. Russia and Uzbekistan assisted the Tajik National Army, which was weak, and which was constantly engaged in battle in southern Tajikistan and in Dushanbe. Their troops patrolled the volatile border with Afghanistan, from which many Taliban and Northern Alliance fighters supporting the UTO had come from.

The civil war ended in 1997, but in 2010, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the United Tajik Opposition were resurrected and fought against the goverment in eastern Tajikistan. The Tajik Army was ambushed several times early in the war, but they carried out several military operations in the Rasht Valley against the rebels. The Tajik National Army, now composed of several veterans of both sides of the Tajik Civil War's first phase in the 1990s, fought the rebels vigorously, and they eventually emerged victorious, with fighting halting in August 2012.

The Tajik National Army was trained by the United States, whose trainers worked to set up a non-commissioned officer corps to train enlisted men, but as the process was to take time, the Tajik army's officers trained the men. Their military is structured in a Soviet way, and still uses vintage Soviet weapons from the 1980s and earlier.